Today I woke up a little late because my alarm hadn't gone off. I hastily got out of bed and made me some toast. After which Mum got up and so did my sister. Dad was already up. We were intending to be up at first light but due to alarm failure I wasn't up until 6:38 AM. Then we all hopped in the car and drove to High Rock. It's a fishing spot where people go balloon fishing. Balloon fishing is where people fill special balloons with helium and tie it to their line. Underneath the ballon they suspend their bait (a 30 cm Garfish) which skips across the water as the ballon rises and falls with the wind.
On the way there the car was making a funny grinding noise. Dad stopped to check what was wrong and discovered that we had a flat tyre. Talk about bad luck. So we all hopped out and started unloading the back so we could access the jack. Then Dad started to jack up the car. After various attempts to stop the jack sinking into the sandy track we gave up and let it sink. After a while Dad told me to operate the jack while he removed the wheel nuts. When I got the car up high enough Dad lifted the wheel of and my sister rolled the spare to where dad was standing. Dad fitted the tyre back on easily and then drove the 100 metres to the car park for the fishing spot.
We arrived at High Rock about 20 minutes late. It would have been half an hour if Dad didn't know how to change a tyre quickly. When we arrived we saw the balloon fishers and we watch for a bit. Then my sister and I went to look for crabs. I found a dead one in a pool about 20 cm deep. We thought it was safe to stick our fingers in but decided against it. This was just as well as I found a hook lying around and dangled it down on a bit of line and a massive crab came darting out from under a ledge and attacked my hook. This pool was only about 15 cm wide and 10 cm long. I fished the dead crab out by yanking the hook sharply into it's body. It flopped dead and didn't move an inch. Then I tried to catch the live crab but it wouldn't attack. After that the guy who was fishing next to where we were standing hooked up.
The line screamed off the reel as the fish ran for open sea. Suddenly a violent thrashing occurred 100 metres out from the cliff. The sharks were attacking the Mackerel which was thrashing about wildly trying to get away from the sharks. Then one of the sharks hooked itself on the line and took off. The guy who was holding the rod tightened the drag so that the shark would snap the line. We watched this for three hours. After a fair while one guy hooked up to a large Mackerel. It fought a fair bit before the guy finally got it in. Another guy gaffed it. The Mackerel was about 1.2 metres long and probably weighed about twenty kilos. Then we drove back to the caravan and Dad talked to the guy at the store. Mum cooked us beans on toast and fried eggs. It was a pretty yummy lunch. Yes it was already 12:00 o'clock, lunchtime.
After lunch we drove to a beach and fished a bit. We walked along the beach until we came to a rock point where we started fishing. I dropped a line down and immediately hooked a small Blackspot Sergeant Fish. I released it and put on some new bait. Then Mum hooked up to a small fish. The water we were fishing in was only about 40 cm deep in the deep spots. There was also a channel running through the shallow area which was about 50 cm deep. You could see all the little fish as they swarmed around your bait. Mum reeled her fish up to find it was also a Blackspot Sergeant Fish. After that I caught one fish after the other while Mum only caught 4 more fish.
Dad got a fish on the surf rod halfway through. It was a Surge Wrasse. The fish was about 40 cm long and the colours were absolutely amazing. We took some photos and released it. Then I started catching Wrasses. The first Wrasse I caught was a Moon Wrasse. It had very nice colours as well. I only caught about 3 more of them for the whole fishing trip. The other Wrasses I was catching I still haven't identified yet, even with the help of a fish book. These were brown Wrasses with orange pectoral fins. I also discovered that most of the Wrasses were hiding in the deep channel. I called this channel Wrasse Channel because if you hooked a fish in there you could bet your life that it was a Wrasse. The biggest catch of the day was Dad's fish. Our Wrasses and Blackspot Sergeant Fish were only about 15 to 20 cm though I did catch three Blackspot Sergeant Fish which were close to 30 cm. After about 3 hours of this great fun we headed back to the car.
Then we drove back to the caravan and I made some new rigs for tomorrow. Then I went inside for dinner. Dinner was some Mackerel that the fishing guys had given us. It tasted great with Wasabi and fried potatoes. After dinner we looked up the different Wrasses that we caught today. The brown ones we didn't find so we still don't know what they are. After that I started writing the blog. Then we had dessert. Dessert was the rest of those fresh cookies. After dessert I finished writing the blog and went to bed.
Oggi siamo andati de pesca.
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